Oh Tannenbaum

I don't think there is such a thing as an "easy" Christmas tree. For over 30 years my husband and I had a real Christmas tree in our home for the holiday season and in the home of my childhood there was always a real Christmas tree. I even recall both sets of grandparents and all my aunts and uncles having real Christmas trees on the years we visited them. My paternal grandfather set the bar for Christmas tree perfection. He would find the best tree to be had in east Texas and then take it home and make it better by drilling holes in the trunk in areas he deemed too sparse and inserting additional branches - a "Franken-tree" of sorts.

Upon becoming an empty-nester the thrill of finding the perfect tree was replaced by the drudge of having to decorate it by myself. There was no one to drink hot cocoa with, no one to listen to Christmas music with, and no one to assist with the work of stringing hundreds (thousands?) of lights on the tree or to help place all of the ornaments, or reminisce about where each ornament had come from. So last year I did the unthinkable, I bought an artificial tree. My children were horrified, but since these were the same children who no longer helped put up the tree or take down the tree their vote didn't count.

Last year I unpacked the new, pre-lit tree, hung a limited number of ornaments on it, and told myself it would grow on me. This year I unpacked the not quite so new, pre-lit tree and wondered why all of the lights no longer worked and why the branches looked so smushed. After hours spent this evening trying to un-smush the branches and figure out the tree's electronic system I decided this artificial tree is just as much work as a real one.

Why do I do it? Why do I continue, year after year, to put up a tree, drag out all of the ornaments and decorations and exhaust myself with holiday decorating only to have to take it all down in thirty days? I ask myself this every year, and more so recently when the children are rarely in the house during the month of December.

But I do know the answer. I do it because once it is done, once the tree is up and the house is decorated and the presents are wrapped - I remember my Christmases past, the joy and love and care my mother, my grandmothers and my aunts put into the holiday. I feel the love reach across the generations and I want my children to feel the same thing one day when they are wrestling with their Christmas tree and with the question of why bother. I want them to have special holiday memories and special holiday traditions to share with their families. So it is all about the love, the love I have for my family and the love I hope we all feel toward mankind at this special time of year.

So bring on the tree, I'll figure out the lights, I'll un-smush the branches, and I'll get it decorated all while trying not to grumble about it too much. If my east Texas grandfather could "create" the perfect tree, the least I can do is take mine out of the box, put it together correctly, and be thankful that he'll never know I gave up on the real tree and bought a fake!

Leftovers

Thanksgiving Leftovers: turkey, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, green beans, creamed spinach, fruit salad, rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie, cherry pie, pecan pie, whipped cream. After four days I am thankful that Thanksgiving only comes once a year!

Black Friday

(After writing today's blog I found this photo which one of my friends took while standing in line at Old Navy)


Ahh, the day after Thanksgiving - a day of sleeping late and eating leftovers. A day of vegging out and lolling around the house. One of the few holidays I have from work that, by the nature of being a holiday, doesn't involve cooking and cleaning for company. Today is an official "do nothing" holiday, which is why I cannot understand why anyone would opt to get up in the middle of the night to go Christmas shop on Black Friday. The traffic, the hordes of shoppers, the lack of customer help and all in the name of getting a bargain, of saving a few bucks.

Yesterday my hometown newspaper was enormous; four times the normal size. Bringing it in from its landing place on my driveway I was excited, not just because I didn't have to crawl under a car or in the bushes to retrieve it, I was eager to have a leisure morning to read the news before beginning cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. I was sorely disappointed to discover the paper to have even less news content than normal, over three-fourths was sales advertisements.

I know people (am actually related to people) who probably plotted out their Black Friday shopping excursions. Had I been so incline, my day could have gone something like this:
2:30 a.m. - Awake and dress, make sure to wear soccer elbow and knee pads, borrowed from my niece, under clothes. Lace up running shoes.
3:15 a.m. - drive to mall, search for parking spot, get in line outside of Sears. As soon as the doors open at 4:00 a.m. make a dash to the Electronics Department for the $79 Kodak digital camera. There are only 5 at each store and no rainchecks. I pity anyone who stands in my way! After scoring the camera I make a bee-line to the Tool Department for a $39 drill (24 per store) and then on the the Clothing Department for $9.99 store-brand jeans for the entire family. (I know no one who will wear this brand, but hey - they're $9.99!)
4:38 a.m. - Clock my personal best quarter mile speed while running to J.C. Penney at the opposite end of the Mall. At Penney's I can get a $12.88 coffee maker (programmable), $29.99 women's boots (do we think they are leather?) and for $17.88 a 4-shooter rotating liquor dispenser (doesn't that just scream Christmas present?) plus, a FREE Disney snow globe and a $10 store coupon good only tomorrow. Sweet!
4:59 a.m. - Race across town to Kohl's Department Store which also opened at 4:00 a.m. I can get $10 Kohl's Cash for every $50 I spend. "It's like getting paid to shop," states their ad. Honestly, there isn't much from this store I want/need, but they boast "over 300 Early Bird Specials," so I'm sure I can find something. After all - they are paying me to shop!

After Kohl's, it is on to the slacker stores that waited until 5:00 a.m. to open:
Best Buy has $9.00 DVDs
Academy sports has licensed team hoodies for $12.99. A must for all the sports fans on my X-mas list.
Burlington Coat Factory has "Bubble Jackets" for the entire family for $9.99. So what if they make you look like the Michelin Man!
At Target I'm going for the $59.99 eight bottle wine fridge with a free electric wine bottle opener, a $19 value! I think I'll need it after today's shopping excursion.
At Walmart I can get a $78 Blu-ray Disc Player (and mugged in the parking lot).
At Toys-R-Us I'm after the $99 (Regularly $299 - Save $200) Furreal Friends life-size pony, only to discover Toys-R-Us opened at midnight and they've already sold out. In my excitement I failed to read the ad closely enough - alas, my inexperience is showing.

It is now 7:15 and I still have the stores which opened at 6:00 a.m. to hit and I'm already over an hour off schedule. I guess I'll just park outside of the Verizon Store and hope I snag one of the $29 laptop computers. Hmmm, small print. I search out my reading glasses at the bottom of my purse under all of the morning sales receipts, and read, "$100 mail in rebate debit card. Requires new 2-year activation on a Mobile Broadband Plan. See page 2 for details." Twenty-nine dollars, indeed!

In actuality I slept until 9:00 a.m. and enjoyed Thanksgiving leftovers for breakfast. The only sale I'm going to today is the buy one, get one free book sale at my favorite used book store, Awesome Books.

Talkin' Turkey

I am working on a project with a college student from China who will experience her first American Thanksgiving today. She has apologized profusely for phoning or emailing me this week, disturbing me before my "big American holiday." Her reverence of the day has caused me to see Thanksgiving with new eyes and to appreciate the uniqueness of the day.

I prefer not to think of the origins; the vision of sweet Pilgrims and Indians sharing a meal has been replaced by stolen land, buffalo massacres and cholera-infected blankets. I much prefer to think of the many Thanksgivings I have spent with my family over the years.

Americans are fiercely proud of their Thanksgiving traditions, even the date - the fourth Thursday in November, can't be tampered with. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to change it during his presidency to the third Thursday to increase the number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but Americans refused to let go of tradition. Sadly, as addicted to shopping as our society is today, we might buy into the idea, but it is too late, following the three year debacle of third Thursday Thanksgivings, FDR made Thanksgiving a National Holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Prior to this Thanksgiving wasn't a National Holiday - who knew?

Hopefully, we've learned a lesson from FDR about messing with tradition and every family has their own. My paternal, east Texas side of the family has a smoked turkey, while my maternal west Texas family thinks smoked turkey is an abomination and insists upon oven roasted. Some families must have marshmallows on sweet potatoes, others sans. Of course there is the jellied vs. whole cranberry debate and the light bread vs. cornbread dressing battle. And does your family call it dressing or stuffing and is it in the bird or out?

Traditions run deep. It took years of plotting and conniving on my part to replace the soupy gelatinous mess called green bean casserole with fresh cooked al dente haricots vertes, but the Cool Whip coated fruit, called ambrosia, still makes an annual appearance. Blending families for the holiday meal adds new food traditions. My niece wants her mother's pumpkin roll for dessert, Aunt Dee puts oysters in her dressing, my daughters insist I make the mashed potatoes, and if my sister and I were sharing the holiday we would have to make pink salad (a concoction made with cherry pie filling, canned pineapple and marshmallows), not because we especially like it, but because our mother always made it. I pine for the homemade egg noodles my east Texas Maw Maw served at holiday meals alongside the mashed potatoes and dressing and giblet gravy - it was a starch-fest.

Today, as I sit down to Thanksgiving with my family I will remember the traditions passed from generation to generation and family to family. The traditions that make my Thanksgiving and the Thanksgivings at tables across America special and unique. I will think of my new Chinese friend and wonder what she thinks of this American holiday of excess and abundance. If she is wowed by today, just wait until tomorrow when she gets to experience Black Friday.

What was FDR thinking when he tried to add another week of Christmas shopping? We're Americans, we can do it all in one day!

Instant Karma

For four years I have wanted headboards on the beds at our lake cabin. We bought the place furnished, but the beds are on metal frames only, no headboards. Off and on I've searched garage sales, estate sales, used and new furniture stores, to no avail. I either could find nothing I liked or the price was too steep to rationalize for a piece of furniture at a rustic lake house. The past few weeks I began taking my quest a little more seriously because my writing group will be using the cabin for quarterly retreats. I hit all the same furniture haunts and at a garage sale I thought I hit the jackpot. The woman selling her wares assured me her daughter would bring a Queen-size sleigh bed to the sale the next day. The price was not too high, but the color was wrong. It was dark wood and I really wanted light wood or white, but I've long lived by the adage, "Beggars, can't be choosers." I left my name and phone number and promised to return the following day with cash in hand. The timing was great, as my husband and I were going to the cabin and could install the new bed before the writing retreat.

I returned for "my" new bed, only to discover the proprietor of the garage sale had not honored her promise and sold the bed to the first person waving cash at her. I was disappointed and mad, I had negative thoughts about the woman that involved wishing bad karma upon her! My Zen-like husband made his usual, "It wasn't meant to be" comment.

The next day, en route to the lake sans a headboard my husband spied another garage sale and asked if I'd like to stop. "Sure," I replied unenthusiastically, knowing it would be an exercise in futility, as most garage sales are. But what did I see as we approached the sale? A white queen-size headboard. I jumped out of the car with more than a little excitement, and inquired the price. "Two dollars," was the reply. Two dollars!?! On what planet can you buy a queen-size headboard for two dollars? Even if it was old, cheaply made, and peeling paint, I would have paid much, much more. the headboard just fit in the back of my SUV and we continued on our way to the Lake, believing a little more in Karma.

The 50,000 Word Quest

I am on a wild and crazy mission, one that will keep me up late and drive me nuts. I am participating in Nanowrimo. I must write 50,000 words by the end of the month. I must write a very rough draft of a novel or some other such and nonsense. So, this means I have another excuse for not cleaning house or keeping up with my blog. What will I think of next?